Outliers of Occupy

Occupation is a tactic of the 99% movement. The end of the physical Occupation at City Hall in Los Angeles was the beginning of the next phase of the Movement, the order beyond the chaos of the occupation. Though the General Assembly still convenes on the west steps of City Hall weekly, some people from OC-LA have already migrated to Washington D.C. Presumably that geography is the next focus for the Movement.

In Los Angeles, I was continually surprised at the misrepresentation and under-reporting of the occupation. Reports were focused on the outliers in the camp; homeless people from the adjacent skid row, Venice Beach drifters, paroles from nearby Central City and people recently released from County Jail who the police reportedly encouraged to go to the camp. What everyone seemed to be missing was the fact that these people represented the human face of a microcosmic expression of the issues that propel the Movement; economic inequality, transgenerational poverty, homelessness, addiction, crime, a failed education system, lack of mental health services and the destruction of the nuclear family by the Prison Industrial Complex in urban areas that have no financial infrastructure.

These are the people permanently relegated to the bottom of the capitalist system with no possibility for upward mobility. Their chances for upward mobility are better in France, Germany, Norway, Sweden or Denmark. I can't imagine who would be more appropriately welcomed in a populist movement of inclusion.

Among the other decidedly sharp criticisms of the embryonic crusade are the many voices demanding a specific agenda or list of demands. One now might ask da Vinci to render the Mona Lisa from his cradle with crayon. The 99% movement has materialized a global network. Seems like a good start for the burgeoning new consciousness.